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Review Summary

“Puss in Boots” mixes it all up. Even more than in the “Shrek” movies, from which this likely candidate for a new animated franchise is spun off, it is a cheerfully chaotic jumble of fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters parachuted into a Spanish storybook setting. It also looks terrific: brighter, with a lot more visual pizzazz than the “Shrek” films. Even when the story loses its thread, the movie rewards your eye. The tale, revolving around Puss, a popular character first introduced in “Shrek 2,” imagines this vain, spoiled, swashbuckler (voiced by Antonio Banderas) with delusions of grandeur, colliding with Humpty Dumpty, the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs, Jack and Jill, and Mother Goose herself. Puss is given a tentative romantic interest in the feisty and seductive Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), who first appears in disguise and eventually becomes his sidekick and partner in crime. Kitty’s tragedy is that she has been declawed, but the movie makes little of it. Despite some perky quasi-flamenco dance numbers, their teamwork never quite soars into Astaire-Rogers heaven. — Stephen Holden